#Steamship February 18

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Over the past several weeks I have traveled up I-95 to Fayetteville and have driven past the exit for NC 87. Highway 87 can get you from Fayetteville NC to Wilmington NC with a lot of being close to the Cape Fear River. I began to think about a mode of transportation that seems foreign to us today but in the 19th century if you wanted to got to Wilmington, NC from Fayetteville NC you took a STEAMSHIP on the Cape Fear.

The fare was $3.00 and in today’s dollars that meant $100.00 The STEAMSHIPS apparently went up and down the river in all kinds of weather including cold.

STEAMSHIPS were carrying cargo up and down the Cape Fear River early in the 1800’s. James Seawell was responsible for the first steamboat constructed in-state, the Henrietta, named for his daughter. The Henrietta traversed the Cape Fear between Fayetteville, which was Seawell home, and Wilmington and would be the first to go up the Cape Fear to Averasboro. Seawell had a 7 year monopoly on Cape Fear River traffic.

In 1849 the NC General Assembly passed the Cape Fear River and Navigation Act . That law allowed a series of dams with locks and canals enabling barges and small steamships, limited to twenty feet in width, to run from Lee County to Wilmington. 

135 years ago the Cape Fear region experienced some very cold weather. So cold in fact the Cape Fear River froze.

This seems hard for us to imagine today. We just never see the entire Cape Fear River frozen. THE WILMINGTON STAR newspaper for February 13, 1886, tells us that in January, 1886, two of the steamers, the “Bladen” and the “Hurt” loaded at Fayetteville and headed down a frozen river toward Wilmington. After several days, more characterized by difficulties than by progress, the two skippers admitting defeat, tied up their ships at Tar Heel. Whereupon the passengers disembarked and walked twenty miles overland to Lumberton, where they were able to take a train for Wilmington.

Next time you leave Fayetteville NC driving down NC 87 headed towards Wilmington via Elizabethtown, NC think about laying down $3.00 and riding a steamship. Times have changed and when it comes to travel the changes are for the better.